WRITING IN SCIENCE AND MATH

Just as the nature of and expectation for literacy has changed in the past century and a half, so has the nature of writing. Today people write as never before—texting, on blogs, with video cameras and cell phones, and, yes, even with traditional pen and paper. People write at home, at work, inside and out of school.

Literacy education and literacy practices are in the midst of a profound change.

Our schools and our nation need to recognize and validate the many ways we all are writing.

We need to develop new models of writing, design a new curriculum supporting those models, and create models for teaching that curriculum.

We need to make sure that all students have the opportunity to write and learn in intellectually stimulating classrooms.

We need to recognize that out-of-school literacy practices are as critical to students’ development as what occurs in the classroom and take advantage of this to better connect classroom work to real-world situations that students will encounter across a lifetime.